


Lucky Charm

by sadlikeknives



Category: The Royal We - Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan
Genre: Baseball, F/M, Goats, Royal Tours, The Chicago Cubs - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-08-31 16:35:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8585839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: HRH The Duchess of Clarence had exactly one request for her first official royal tour: "Wrigley Field."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ancarett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancarett/gifts).



> I have no idea how this happened. I am not even a baseball person, never mind a Chicago Cubs person. But Bex Porter sure is. Ancarett, I don't know if you're a baseball person, either, but I hope you enjoy this either way!

Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Clarence's first official Royal Tour would mark the end of their honeymoon period of settling in to married and, in Bex's case, royal life. Afterward, Nick had another month before he shipped out for his next tour of duty on _HMS Pembroke_ , while Bex would be left ashore to finish overseeing the renovations of their apartment at Kensington Palace, which had last been renovated just after the war, and was therefore a total disaster of asbestos, lead pipes, bad wiring, and mold; the _Daily Mail_ reported breathlessly on the budget whenever there was a slow news day, because they clearly had no idea how much abating _any_ of those things in a historic building cost. When it was handed down from on high (so, Nick's grandmother) that the tour would be in the land of Bex's birth, probably on the grounds that Bex was likely to make fewer etiquette blunders there than anywhere else they could possibly send her, especially considering that the States still felt a surge of affection for their very own Princess Bride, Bex had exactly one request: "Wrigley Field."

Given her dealings with the palace to date, and perhaps especially the heart attack she had nearly given poor Marj, who was responsible for much of the organizing of this thing as she was responsible for much of the organizing of everything else in Nick and Bex's lives, on the eve of their wedding, she had no hope whatsoever that her request would be honored, but she had to make it. Earl Porter would have rolled over in his grave if she hadn't at least tried. Trying for an afternoon blocked out to put on baseball caps and anonymous sweaters and sneak off to take Nick to his first baseball game would have been sheer delusion, but a tour, perhaps some sort of charity to-do, these she could just dare to dream of.

And then, during the meeting to discuss the official itinerary, which had just been ironed out following a lot of arrangements and discussions in which Nick and Bex had had no input whatsoever, Marj said, "Day Five, morning at Art Outreach, a nonprofit center for underprivileged youth to practice the arts, right in your wheelhouse, Bex, more information to come in your briefing packets later, afternoon--" and Bex turned the page of her Itinerary Packet and gasped in shock as Marj continued, "Baseball game at Wrigley Field." Bex just gaped at her, and Marj quirked up one corner of her mouth in the barest hint of a smile. "Well, there have to be _some_ perks to the job, don't there?"

"This will, of course, be His Royal Highness's first baseball game," one of the other staffers, Braithwaite, said in the same oily sort of way he said everything else. It drove Bex crazy, as did the fact that he would only refer to her and Nick as 'His and Her Royal Highness,' no matter how often they told him not to, but he was annoyingly good at his job.

"And about Bex's hundredth," Nick said cheerfully.

"Fiftieth, at least," Bex agreed, still gazing at the itinerary packet and glowing.

"You'll have to explain the rules to me, darling," Nick said. "I believe it's a bit like cricket, yes?" Bex rolled her eyes at him, and he asked Marj, "Who are they playing? Is it the Yankees? Please tell me it's the Yankees, she hates them."

"No," Bex said, rolling her eyes again, "it can't be the Yankees. I don't think we're playing them this year."

"How on Earth can you not play them this year?"

"It's not like the Premier League, Nick."

"See, this is the sort of thing you need to explain to me!"

"I believe it will be the Pittsburgh Pirates," Marj said, as if they hadn't hared off on their tangent. "Day Six, morning..."

That was not, of course, the end of the discussion. The weeks leading up to the tour were nothing but meetings, fittings, and more meetings. At one of them, when the subject of the baseball game came up, Braithwaite ventured to say, "It would, of course, be unseemly to appear too partisan—some measure of support for the home team is of course understood, but it is important to appear...ah...measured?" He trailed off, having transitioned from oily to uncertain as Nick failed to restrain snickers and Marj's quirked mouth transformed into a full-on smirk.

"Oh, come on," Bex said. "I've been to Ascot. You can't pull that wool over my eyes." The royals couldn't appear partisan at sporting events, her middle class ass.

"There's no hope, Benedict," Marj told him, patting him on the arm. "I'm sure the people will appreciate Bex's enthusiasm."

"Unbridled," Barnes added in the same grim way Barnes said almost everything, "thought it may be."

For once, Nick's binder for study was substantially thicker than Bex's own, a fact she lorded over him for about ten minutes before she really had to return to memorizing key facts for conversation with the mayor of Boston, where they would be visiting before Chicago, which would, in turn, be followed by a brief stop in Muscatine (where she would join Nancy and Lacey to announce the Earl Porter Memorial Scholarship for students going into STEM fields) for that hometown-girl-makes-good human interest note it was so important to cultivate in light of the fact that, despite their being saved at the eleventh hour by Paddington Larchmont-Kent-Smythe's tossing his and Joss's laptops in the Thames and his own failure to back up his data beyond that, Clive still existed. He had no clearance, no access, and no ability to prove anything, but it didn't hurt to have a bumper of goodwill built up. Just in case. 

All in all, the trip would be ten days of hard work that would, to the rest of the world, look like a lark of a vacation. Bex really wasn't looking forward to most of it, especially their scheduled meeting with the president in DC to discuss Nick's wildlife conservancy efforts, where she would have to try not to feel too awkward about having renounced her citizenship. But every time Bex began to get stressed out about it, every time she felt herself getting overwhelmed, she had her support system now. She had Nick, above all else, but she also had Lacey back, and Cilla and Gaz and Bea, once she'd thrown her lot in, had never left. She could take it out on Marj, if nothing else. "I'm worried that it won't be the same," she confided to Nick one night. "I mean, the last time I was at Wrigley Field was with my dad."

Nick grabbed her hand, raised it to his mouth and kissed it before saying, "It won't be the same, no. You weren't being escorted around by dignitaries last time, for one thing. And that reminds me, Marj said she shot down something about a goat?"

Bex sat straight up in bed. "They wanted me to do something with a goat?"

"You're going to have to explain this to me. My dossier said there was something about a curse?"

"Nick! I have to call Marj and tell her I'll do the thing with the goat!"

"She's probably afraid Gran will think it's beneath the royal dignity--"

"Nick, two months ago I gave a bunch of shamrocks to a dog. And Freddie visited a goat in a military uniform last week."

"Ah, yes, Edwina," Nick agreed, "but Edwina is a regimental mascot--"

"And Edwina is not any sillier than what will probably just be a photo op with a goat, which, who knows, might help break the curse! I have to do it. I _have to_. My dad would want me to do it. I mean," she amended, "he'd get a kick out of it, at least."

"All right, all right, calm down," Nick said, half-laughing. "You can talk to Marj about it in the morning."

Marj just said, "Hmmm," when Bex broached the subject to her, but Bex was not, as she once might have been, dissuaded in the least.

"I am not even joking, this is really important to me." It was only then that Bex realized she should probably ask, "Uh, what do they want me to _do_ with the goat, anyway?"

"It's quite simple, really," Marj said. "Lead it onto the field, stand there for a moment for the photo op while the emcee reads out a bit about their nonprofit initiative--" she shuffled through her binders for a moment before coming up with a Post-It and reading off, "'Reverse the Curse, giving goats to families in underdeveloped nations to help lift them out of poverty.' Then someone will lead the goat off and you'll throw out the first pitch. Not that out of line with the usual sort of nonsense you'll be called upon to do in the execution of your duties, but I had hoped for your introduction to public animal husbandry to be slightly less...public. But if you want to do it, I'll call them back and tell them it's a go."

"I'll do it," Bex agreed without a moment's hesitation.

"And then we'll see about finding you a goat to practice with." Bex wilted at the prospect of goat wrangling lessons, but then Marj added, "At least it's a casual event, so you won't have to manage it in heels," and Bex perked back up. There was always a bright side.

The approved outfit for Day Five, Afternoon Event was, in fact, almost Real Bex. Or as close to Real Bex as HRH Bex got to get: skinny jeans, a blue and white striped t-shirt, white Converse, and a navy blazer. Sure, the blazer was by Alexander McQueen, the shoes were absolutely spotless, and Bex-a-Porter would probably enjoy the challenge of figuring out just which skinny jeans and Breton-striped shirt they were, but still. They were Bex clothes. She had a different outfit for the morning, but it was shaping up to be the most Bex afternoon seen by the public since she had stepped out of Sandringham House on Christmas Day with the Lyons Emerald on her finger. She was positively glowing, to the point that, when she attended a Paint Britain event, the press began speculating that there would be a royal baby to follow up the royal wedding soon enough.

Unbeknownst to Nick and Bex, at Clarence House and Buckingham Palace, tentative discussions were underway: might it not be possible, especially if the timing was particularly carefully handled for, say, when the public was awash with good feeling over (while of course The Duchess of Clarence was not with child just yet) Royal Baby pictures and the promise of more (perhaps in the lead-up to the christening), and if the wording was handled very, very carefully, might it not just be possible for The Prince and Princess of Wales to be divorced?

The decision was broken to Nick and Freddie in a private meeting, and without any mention of Bex's uterus' impact on the proceedings, merely an explanation that it would have to be undertaken at the correct time.

Nick took it far better than Bex had expected. He took it well, even. "Obviously it bothers me," Nick said when he'd returned from said meeting and sacked out on the couch with Bex to catch up on _The Only Way is Essex_ , "but honestly, it hasn't been a marriage for a very long time. Mum will still get the best of care, but it's not...I think people will understand that she can't be a partner to him, and it's not really fair to pretend otherwise. Especially when he becomes king."

Somewhat surprisingly, Freddie, from how quickly he set about ensuring the correct time would not be anytime soon, took it considerably less well.

Two nights later, Nick woke to a phone call in the middle of the night, and Bex, blearily trying to get her bearings beside him, heard, "What? You what? Why are you even _in_ Las Vegas?" and knew it was Freddie.

"Please tell me no one's pregnant," she muttered half-into her pillow, and Nick shook his head. So that was something, at least.

"Yes, I agree," Nick said to the phone, "he'll kill you, but he really shouldn't be surprised at this point." Bex started to fall back asleep, only waking up when Nick started to settle down beside her. She murmured a sleepy question, and Nick explained, "There is now a video on the internet of my brother, starkers, playing _strip billiards_ in Las Vegas."

Bex considered this for a moment and asked, "If he's starkers, hadn't he already lost?"

"Apparently he still has his socks on."

"He's been behaving for a while, now," Bex pointed out. After the wedding, Freddie had kept his head down, as if afraid that the next time his hijinx made the papers somehow a paragraph about how he'd kissed his new sister-in-law, twice, would accompany them. "It had to come boiling out eventually."

"I know," Nick agreed. "I know. It's just that the timing is ghastly."

"The tour," Bex said sleepily.

"The tour."

And then she sat straight up in bed, suddenly wide awake. "They wouldn't cancel the baseball game, would they?"

Nick laughed. "No, love, that won't happen."

"Oh," Bex said. "Good." And then she laid down, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

In fact, the only edit to the tour in the wake of Freddie's bout of Freddieness was a suggestion that at his first speech, at the dinner in Washington, Nick slip in a jovial mention (Barnes' exact words) of how they would, sorry to disappoint, not be visiting Vegas on this trip, as that city had seen "quite enough" of the Lyons family to last it a while. When deployed, the line got exactly the laugh, and exactly the good-natured press, it had been calculated to.

***

"Princess Bex" was caught on tape telling the staff member who greeted them upon arrival at Wrigley Field that, "This is the best day of my life!"

"Second best, right?" Nick corrected her teasingly.

"Right, second best, yes," Bex agreed, adding in a joking aside, "but not by much," even though they both knew that was not exactly true. 

Through some absolute miracle, to the best of their knowledge, Prince Richard had never found out about the crisis on the eve of their wedding, but Queen Eleanor had been informed, and between her disapproval masked behind Advanced Pleasantness and the looming fear that Clive was going to find a way to go public after all, their wedding day had been one giant knot of tension. The best part of it had been when it was over, and they were not only legally but publicly married and could breathe a little. Thankfully, to the rest of the world, it had seemed like the fairy tale it was being sold as.

Nick added a cheerful, "So this is why Rebecca keeps such odd hours peering at her laptop sometimes," as he looked up at the ballpark, and everyone laughed. Then they were given personalized jerseys—Clarence 1 for Bex, Clarence 2 for Nick, who laughed and said, "Oh, I see how it is," as his wife immediately ditched her blazer to put the jersey on over her striped shirt, to go with the Cubs hat she was already wearing (as putting it on later would have mussed the carefully curled ends of the ponytail Kira had put Bex's hair in, she'd had to don it during the hairdressing process, and was under strict orders not to remove it; it was a very lucky thing baseball jerseys buttoned).

The other soundbyte that got a lot of play was Bex's, "Oh, good," which had perhaps a little too much relief in it when she was assured that Frank, the goat she would be escorting, was "quite docile." All in all, it was the perfect photo op event ("People do love Sporty Bex," Marj commented during the tour postmortem, "we'll have to schedule more events considering that."): Bex and Nick getting their jerseys, Bex with the goat, Bex deciding at the last minute that Nick should throw out the first pitch, to his visible alarm, and giving him pointers. Bex screaming her face off from the luxury box. One of the fan sites ran a full gallery of just "Duchess Bex Makes Sports Faces." Bex's visible delight after the game when they got to meet the rest of the team, especially when Jake Arrietta told her, "You must be a lucky charm!" in reference to the 10-5 scoreline.

"Oh, I don't know that," Bex told him. "They haven't all been winners. Sadly."

As the season went on, and the Cubs continued to do well, it began to gain traction: could HRH Bex have broken the curse? Was she really a lucky charm? A few exceptionally hopeful royal watchers suggested that maybe a Royal Baby was the real lucky charm, but as time went by without any announcement of such an impending arrival, their hopes faded as Bex and the rest of the Cubs faithful's grew.

***

**November 2, 2016, London**

"Hello?"

"I have to go to Cleveland."

"What—I—Bex? Your Royal Highness? It's almost four in the morning! I expect these calls from Frederick, not--"

"Sorry to wake you up, but, right now. I have to go to Cleveland right now."

"...Game Seven is on, then? Of course, of course, let me patch in Barnes."

"I really don't think that's--"

"Hello?"

"The duchess needs to go to Cleveland."

"Oh, yes, of course, all the arrangements for this eventuality have been made, Your Highness. Just a moment...ah, here we go. You, your sister—I assume she'll be along—and your protection detail are booked onto British Airways' morning flight from Heathrow to New York, with a charter flight from there to Ohio. The car will be by to pick you up at five thirty. The seats for the game are very good, of course...Your Highness?"

"You _planned_ this?"

"Of course we planned for this, Your Highness. We had contingencies for Games Four through Six, as well. If Arsenal were in the Champions League Final I'd do anything to be there."

"I—thank you, Barnes, _thank_ you."

"You do have the film premiere tomorrow evening, of course, but I believe Lady Elizabeth or Master Frederick can be tapped in for that if it proves necessary. I will inform them of the possible need at a more reasonable hour."

"Do try to get a bit of sleep on the plane, Bex. Up Cubs, or whatever you say."

"That's not it, Marj. I—thank you. Goodbye, thank you, oh my God. I'm going to Cleveland!"

*click*

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The real life renovation of Apartment 1A at Kensington Palace was, indeed, a matter of pearl-clutching for [The Daily Mail](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2669958/Two-kitchens-Kate-Bill-palace-renovation-rockets-add-room-cosy-suppers.html), because they are the Daily Mail.  
> 2\. The Chicago Cubs won 10-5 against the Pittsburgh Pirates on [June 19, 2016](http://www.espn.com/mlb/recap/_/id/360619116).  
> 3\. Many blame the [Billy Goat Curse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Billy_Goat) for the Chicago Cubs' 108 year World Series drought, and there have been many goat-related efforts to break the curse over the years. [Reverse the Curse](http://reversethecursechicago.com/) is a real nonprofit initiative.  
> 4\. I'm sure we all remember that time [Prince Harry played strip pool in Vegas](http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/22/showbiz/prince-harry-photos/) and are in agreement that Freddie would do the same.  
> 5\. On November 2, 2016, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, defeating the Cleveland Indians in the tenth inning of game seven and breaking their 108 year drought. Somewhere, Bex was screaming.


End file.
